“The president and the congress have a role to play to make sure the public sector invests in coal-fired power.”

We've spent a lot of money on t-shirts, trucks, and advertising to affect the primary campaign, and it's working.

The ACCCE hasn't wasted a moment in beaming their message into the homes of Americans. Here's their 60-second, buzzword-loaded nationwide ad.

“I believe…” is repeated by the “ordinary Americans” in the ad. “I believe in the future… I believe in protecting the environment… I believe in technology… I believe we can limit greenhouse gases… I believe we will do this… Clean Coal. America's Power.”

As DeSmogBlog has pointed out , “clean coal” is a scam. Carbon capture and sequestration is expensive, and won't even be feasible for large-scale operations for many, many years. No matter what the coal lobby tries to make us “believe”, it is false.

I believe in the future. I believe in protecting the environment. I believe my wife and I will cast our votes for Obama in a swing state in November, and then in 2009 help keep up the momentum and pressure until these things are taken off-line for good. Anyone else believing along the same lines?

I’m not sure if it’s the same organization, but during their coverage of the presidential primaries, CNN has been running an ad by either one of these groups or a similar groups that states that coal is the energy that fuels the good times in America. The ad ends with the song “Celebrate”. It’s bizarre, but what I find curious is that non of the campaigns have taken notice and made any kind of statement. It makes me wonder what their position is going to be once one of them is elected president.

I have. You tax carbon and use the revenues to fund building insulation retrofits, and the purachase of green appliances and machinery. You raise emissions standards and small vehicle tax breaks. You support anti urban sprawl policies. You tarriff trade when a nation is an avoidably big CO2e polluter.
You build wind turbines everywhere (not as many brownouts as you might think given wind rarely fails everywhere, as it did in Texas two months ago). You fund solar and Amminex. You fund low footprint research of all types.
Curly light bulbs too.
You kill oil and coal tax breaks. You kill corn ethanol subsidies. You elect progressive governments.
You fund desalination, crop research, hydroponics and greenhouses, apiculture, levee infrastrucutre research, thinktanks that specialize in finding solutions for mass migrations. You alter consumer behaviour towards lower footprint and ethical purchases.
Basically, efficiency savings and wind, with some natural gas.
My progressive plan above doesn’t kill billions of people in the future. Yours does. Kumbaya, MoFu.

And thank you for making my case. AGAIN.
Your suggestions are of course just the usual ineffective dreams that have been touted for years by dreaming greenies.
The only way “your plan” will work (as has been stated ad noseum” is if the industrialized world goes back to pre-industrial life styles.
And of course that would indeed kill Billions of people.
Wind and solar will come in due time when they are ready and will fill small niches.
Taxes will only hurt the poor. Cutting trade only hurt the economy. Forcing people to live in disgusting city centers is just plain cruel.
But since CO2 is not a problem but quite beneficial, all of your ideas are aimed at solving a non issue.
Higher CO2 will in fact help produce more food, which will help feed all the poorer people in the world.
The people you plan will let die.

Does anyone have any ideas that are …. I know this is a bad word to use around greenies but here it is…. practical?

VJ: I have no problem adapting to rality.
It is lies I have trouble adapting to.
I have a problem reverting back to the dark ages because of silly hysteria based on lies promoted by people with hidden profit and power agendas. (see carbon credit scams)
My own lifestyle would shock you.
I do it for legitimate reasons however and not because of any BS about CO2.
Oh and google Brazil and new oil find.
Peak oil is a loooong way off.

We ain’t goin’ to run out of fossil fuels in your lifetime or even your children’s lifetime. So why worry about it. There are about 7 trillion tons of coal out there. Unfortunately, a lot of it lies under prime agricultural land or is too difficult and expensive to extract at current prices. I read recently that the UK is going to reactivate some old underground coal mines.

The Japonese are setting up some plants to extract methane from methane hydrates. There are gazillions of cu. ft. of methane in these reserves such as in the permafrost and in the deep oceans. What’s really cool is that this methane is quite pure and contains no H2S and CO2. These reserves are called unconventional nat gas.

Forgot studies to measure the smog death-toll vs electric car crunches, to render an electric car public safety verdict…I read an article last week about local dry-cleaners using a greener process; the precriptions are generally a failure to adapt best practises or a failure to discount future electricity costs.

“(Troll wrote:) The only way “your plan” will work (as has been stated ad noseum” is if the industrialized world goes back to pre-industrial life styles.
And of course that would indeed kill Billions of people.
Wind and solar will come in due time when they are ready and will fill small niches.
Taxes will only hurt the poor. Cutting trade only hurt the economy. Forcing people to live in disgusting city centers is just plain cruel.
But since CO2 is not a problem but quite beneficial, all of your ideas are aimed at solving a non issue.
Higher CO2 will in fact help produce more food, which will help feed all the poorer people in the world.
The people you plan will let die.”

Ironically, soot from 400 million low-efficiency cooking stoves replaced by higher-efficiency stoves, will add billions of person/years and 1.5 hours a day to the lives of about two billion “pre-industrials”. True, constructing building to take advantage of geothermal heating and copper cooling towers, will add something like 0.25%-2% to initial construction outlays. You get your cost savings back in 5-7 years via cheaper utility costs.
Taxes will only hurt the poor (if fewer Americans believed this the USD would have always been the unquestioned hedgemonic world currency)? The tax is specifically designed to give poorer households a ($10.01) rebate when purchasing, say, an Energy Star microwave that costs $10 more than the Republican/Conservative model.
Moderately higher CO2 levels can potentially increase the yields of key grain crops, all else equal. But they come tied to increasing drought and flood volatility. They come tied to increasing temperatures. If you could somehow decrease select GHGs and increase CO2 emissions with precision, you might have a risky agri-yield geoengineering experiment to propose. But crops hate floods and droughts. Every industry on Earth I can think of, needs freshwater. Global Warming floods and droughts crops, increases insect and fungal growth, increases the spread of said non-indigenous vermin, alters the range of crops to where geology and infrastructure (such as irrigation and farms) is not favourable (north of the Southern Manitoba bread-basket is boreal forest too acidic for crops and north even further is only accessible by winter roads)…
…these problems are potentially solvable, but certainly as soon as Chinese Himalayan meltwater dries up, or as soon as a Monsoon season fails because of Global Warming, the next decade of cost savings by following the Republican/Conservative geoengineering “plan”…such preventable events in the midst of an economic golden age will be looked on by future generations as evil. If doctors and judges work 20 years and spend two years foraging for ants, pine bark, cattail and squirrels, this is more expensive than working 22 years at a 1% higher tax-rate and not seeing uncoordinated family members starve (okay only one would starve).

All Global Warming really is, is an increase in the velocity of heat transfer from oceans to continental surfaces. Higher temperatures churn rainfall and warm air in *unpredictably* different local locations than present crops grow. There will be some exponential formula discovered shortly that ties temperature increase to # of starved humans. Under GWB and S.Harper’s environment platforms, some very optimistic desalination and crop-yield breakthroughs would have to occur, for AGW prevention to be cheaper than neoconservatism.
I’m pretty sure the cost of supplying desalinated water to replace Himalayan meltwater would be more than the entire US economy could output in 2030 given DOE only spends a few tens of millions annually on desalination research…
Farming is where you find suitable seeds, soils, logistics, markets, and predictable rainfall and temperature patterns. The very definition of farming preclude this trolly argument! Beyond GMOs, the prescription would be hydroponic greenhouses or starchy-proteiny chemical vats…once again beyond the affordibility of Uncle Sam.

Wheat yields in MB will fall, using existing strains and land management practises, when the Arctic Circle becomes ice-free in the summer (2015?). Fields will flood unless the soil geology magically adapts to drain the increased runoff at the exact rate required. Despite the 20ppm atmospheric CO2 increase. I doubt there are any Prairie farmers who think increased winter precipitation can be ignored; is a microcosm of global farming. The only plants I can think of that benefit from increased climate beta are cactii.

The best way to counter ads like this isn’t outrage, or complaint. It’s meeting their arguments in as level-headed and reasonable a way as possible, and continuing to push better alternatives, including renewables like solar and wind.

Eric. Carefull now. that is a good and rational suggestion. You are risking being cast out by the cult leadership!!

How about begining with the stat of the art.
Lay our clearly what the current requirement is. What that requirement can reasonabley be reduced to, then.
Lay out clearly what the current technology is cabable of contributing.
Then specuelate on where real gains are likely with the input of research funding and finally:
Debate which direction produces the best overall outcome.
Keep in mind that electric power is one of the most important factors in quality of life. With it, people die or suffer.

Oh Troll, it sounds like you think people aren’t rational when they call BS on the coal propaganda.

Well, yes, we can keep the lights on, we don’t have to build new coal plants that can’t control their carbon, and we don’t have to stay silent while some slick public relations firm sells coal as if it were clean in the same way that big tobacco sold cigarettes at “lite”.

Oh, in case you were wondering how it can be done. http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/ccsi/greenhousegas.asp

That link really tells the story. And in detail. Never mind that forecasting the economy is orders of magnitude less accurate than forecasting climate. (which has a success rate of near zero at this time)
Anyway. 1.1 TRILLION dollars to cut the emission of a Benign plant food.
One wonders what real problems could be solved with 1.1 Trillion dollars.
The list is far too long to print here.
Oh, and BTW; that sum was just for the US.
Therefore the net effect on the climate will equal “ un-measurable “
Perhaps “ Give you head a shake “ is an appropriate sentiment at this point.

Troll, I think you show alot of disrespect to people when you call them “wide eyed innocent little tree huggers” and it dilutes your message. Quite frankly, calling people names and cutting people down in order to argue your point shows how lacking in substance it is. The fact of the matter is no matter how hard anyone tries, they’re never going to convince you that AGW is real. We won’t ever see eye to eye when looking at the situation. I like how you cite a two page pdf from a scientific article by one guy, as if that proves beyond all doubt the falseness of AGW. Its always a single needle in the haystack that AGW skeptics search for amongst a sea of scientific articles and statements by scientific bodies supporting AGW theory. Type “climate change” into any scientific research database and see what comes up. Or check out the statements by the IPCC, National Academy of Sciences, The American Meteorological Society, The American Geophysical Union, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The list goes on and on. Overwhelmingly corporations and businesses are now stepping up and saying that they support cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Some are legit, some arent, but theres an increasing trend. Every developed nation in the world besides the US has signed Kyoto. Recently President Bush came out with a plan to reduce C02 emissions, and even though it’s alot of fluff, it pretty much shows how the entire developed world now approaches AGW theory as reality. Oh I know this still hasnt even swayed you the slightest bit, that everyone here has just been duped so that someone(besides the oil and coal companies of course) can make a profit. The one comforting reality for me(because the reality of AGW isnt exactly comforting) is that your voice is gradually becoming more and more drowned out as public and international opinion on this issue shifts from “is it real?” to “what can we do to mitigate it”. Its nice to have the three remaining presidential candidates having this conversation. Since global warming skeptics are becoming an increasingly marginalized bunch, the are enough of us “wide eyed innocent little tree huggers” to push through our “economy wrecking agendas” without having to worry about you. That makes me smile.

You obviously have not read the names I have been called here. Oh Well not worries.

As for scientific articals.
Wow.
Where to start?
There have been sooooooo many that disagree with you it is just mind boggling that anyone that can read still believes.
Guess that comes from bein Wide Eyed Innocent Tree huggers.
You won’t see the light untill you are up to your ass in ice.

LOL….. Have a great day.
And good luck getting people to vote for third world life styles.

The list of highly respected scientists that disagree is longer now than ever and growing at ” an unpresidented rate ” . Little pun there.
And please look closely at the actual position statments of the presidential candidates. They will talk a good story long enough for the truth to finally dawn on the Wide eyes and then say…. See how wise we were not to commit econocide?

And really… I don’t know where you hang out, but I hardly know anyone that actually believes this myth. Most will politely nod and smile while some greenie go off on a “save the planet” rant, but they are just being polite and politically correct.

And finally:
It will only take one pivitol study to colapse the entire house of cards.
Science is not based on number of papers, number of members, number of anything.
Concensus has been proven completely wrong time and time again.
Ten thousand James Hansens are no match for one good scientist.

Keep believing though. It gives meaning to the meaningless little lives of people everywhere.

It isn’t about voting for third world lifestyles. It is a moral argument.

If I participate in a 1st world economy it wouldn’t be good for me to ignore Sunday morning World Vision commercials and so forth, but it is understandable to most people why I’d put the quality-of-living of my nuclear family ahead of many more strangers. I guess it is monkey brains and social engineering. But if I’m participating in an economy that is knowingly and preventably retarding the future agriculture and freshwater supply of poor people, for the frivolous consumerism of an affluent few…brainwashing by mass media is a weak defense.
I can’t see what in Neoconservatopia is so worth the fight? I understand why wealthy/oily vested interests fight on, but it’s not like people are being brainwashed to do nothing, they are being brainswashed to cause (admittedly future) injury. Is this the distinction that isn’t being grasped? Doing nothing in a green economy would be doing nothing, but in a post-1991 (to me in retrospect when IPCC evidence became overwhelming) economy, doing nothing is inflicting harm.
At some point in the future, whenever the mass-media-brainwashed-me argument holds no bones, doing nothing will be a more evil event than the Holocaust on death-toll alone. Americans and Canadians would be Nazis.

Half of quality-of-living advances are envy and half are genuine. I think neoconservatives are stuck too tightly to serving the former. Now that the Soviet Union is dead, was revealed to be economically impotent and now we know the most dangerous parts of the Cold War were when America didn’t nuke USSR twice and defended China against the USSR once (2-1 score for the doves), why can’t the focus be upon amassing longevity rather than status via brainwashing? What is the purpose of this American experiment?

Clean coal…sure…why not go one step further, and promote CLEANPOLLUTION? God, is there no limit to the amount of bs marketing people can come up with? How about SPARKLINGDIRTY or DEADLYHARMLESS? Newspeak at its best…now seriously, probably one of the most important, if not the most important aspect of the fight for a better, cleaner civilization, is fighting lies and half-lies being spread from big industry..they´ll do ANYTHING for a profit, it´s their only religion, the only dirty word for them is “ethics”. Keep up the fight, the media is the battlescape, ground zero in the war to win over hearts and minds.

"Fossil-fuel companies have spent millions funding anti-global-warming think tanks, purposely creating a climate of doubt around the science. DeSmogBlog is the antidote to that obfuscation." ~ BRYAN WALSH, TIME MAGAZINE